1. Field of the Disclosed Embodiments
This disclosure relates to systems and methods for cooling and de-curling output image receiving media substrates prior to stacking the output image receiving media substrates in output trays of office-sized image forming devices.
2. Related Art
Many modern image forming devices conduct increasingly sophisticated image forming operations for the production of black-and-white and color images on a broad spectrum of image receiving media substrates. These image forming operations are often customized internally by the image forming devices in an effort to optimize the production of images on the myriad image receiving media substrates. As an example, certain image forming devices are caused to operate at differing speeds for the transport of different classes of image receiving media substrates through these image forming devices in support of optimized image forming operations on these different classes of image receiving media substrates. For example, a common conventional image marking engine tasked with producing output images on image receiving media substrates may operate at a nominal speed of 70 pages per minute (ppm) for conducting most image forming operations on standard stock image receiving media substrates. The same conventional image marking engine may slow these image forming operations to half speed (or 35 ppm) on an indication that the image forming operations are to be conducted on certain “heavy” page (paper) stock image receiving media substrates, and may be further adjustable to perform to image forming operations at two thirds speed (or approximately 48 ppm) for certain “other” page (paper) stock image receiving media substrates, including what are commonly referred to in the industry as “coated” stocks. These differing speeds have the advantage of optimizing the image forming operations for the individual image receiving media substrate compositions in the image forming devices.
Customer preferences are often to desire that a particular image forming device output marked image receiving media at a constant speed. In other words, customers want image forming devices that output pages at a particular rate regardless of what occurs internally to the image forming device to make that happen. In an effort to enhance customer satisfaction, and to gain certain market advantage, image forming device manufacturers have undertaken efforts to speed up certain of the image forming operations in a manner that, in the example above, for example, all image forming operations, regardless of a constitution of the image receiving media substrates on which the images are formed by the image forming operations, everything would run at 70 ppm.
As efforts were undertaken to mode image forming devices such that an “all stocks at rated speed” or ASRS functionality could be implemented, certain disadvantageous issues arose. In cases, it was determined that, while the marking engines and fuser components could manage these speeds across many and widely varied compositions of image receiving media substrates, at least the heavy paper image forming operations experienced difficulty. This difficulty manifested itself principally in blocking of heavier paper output image receiving media substrates that would jam, not stack correctly, or stick together at outputs of the image forming devices and in output image media receptacles, including output catch trays (OCTs), associated with the image forming devices. It was determined that this difficulty arose principally because the heavy paper output image receiving media substrates, with images formed and fused thereon, are not afforded enough time to properly cool from the image forming and fusing operations at the accelerated page rates prior to being output to the output image receiving media substrate receptacles.
Additional efforts then had to be undertaken to then counter the manifested difficulties. In certain configurations, a solution was introduced that required that a cooling device (referred to, among other things, as an interface cooling module or ICM) to be added as a particularly-configured separate stand-alone component unit placed between the image marking engine and an output stacker, stapler, or other finishing device. The cooling devices were configured to include de-curlers and other support mechanisms to support an upmarket requirement of ASRS in more complex image forming systems. The cooling devices were generally configured as completely separate, somewhat bulky (e.g., 18-20 inch wide) modules with wheels, cabinetry, electronics, myriad installed components, and separate power sources, specifically provided in an effort to support the customer-requested functioning. The solution turned out to be adequate for large and increasingly complex image forming systems, and for office environments where a physical footprint for a complex image forming system is comparatively unconstrained. The difficulty was that the solution, adding significant footprint, cost and noise to the image forming system, proved incompatible to implementation in many office environments.